I’ve Lived in This Place and I Know All the Faces
by Lefty
Summary: The only one left, Dean as an old man is haunted every Halloween by those he’s lost.


**I've lived in this place and I know all the faces, PG-13**

**Summary:** The only one left, Dean as an old man is haunted every Halloween by those he's lost.

**Disclaimer:** Don't own the boys or the show. The end.

**Notes: **Written for the Halloween Challenge at Community Name. I took _some _liberties with the prompt - the events take place during various times in Dean's life; he's not an old man throughout the entire thing. Story title is from Rascal Flatt's "Moving On."

---

There are places Dean will stay away from simply because they remind him of certain people.

He doesn't drive through Memphis unless he has to because the last time he was there he was too late to save a young girl from a werewolf.

He can't even look at Portland, Oregon on a map after he couldn't convince a stubborn man that there were vengeful spirits in his house and the man and his wife died as a result.

And for whatever reason, Sam always wanted to spend a few days in St. Augustine whenever they were in Florida, so Dean avoids it like the plague.

He soon realizes, though, that it doesn't matter where he goes; he always runs into something that triggers a memory he'd rather forget.

But everywhere tends to have a memory associated with it when you've traveled the country ever since you were a little kid.

---

One year, Dean gets a call from Cassie's mom saying that she needs his help. She says it's important and that it concerns Cassie and that he should hurry.

Dean says, "What's wrong? Is Cassie okay?" but he's already turning the car around.

"Please, Dean. Just come."

Dean drives almost five hundred miles out of his way without so much as a good reason, other than Mrs. Robinson sounded desperate and he doesn't like the feeling in the pit of his stomach. He's not really sure why he _does_ turn around; he hasn't spoken to Cassie in years, but that didn't stop him from helping her the first time.

When he gets to the house, Mrs. Robinson answers the door on his first knock. She smiles almost apologetically and lets him into the foyer.

"What is it?" he asks, his voice low and concerned as he steps into the dimly lit house. "What's wrong?"

She doesn't say anything, just guides him into the living room and lets him take a seat on the couch. Dean glances around the room; the house is pretty much the same as he remembered. Old pictures of Cassie hang on the walls and take up space on the coffee table.

"Dean," Mrs. Robinson says after a few moments, and he can tell she's barely holding it together. "I never really thanked you for what you did for us all those years ago."

He gives her a small smile and shifts uncomfortably on the couch.

"I need your help again. It's about…," she pauses and shifts her eyes to the floor. Dean isn't sure exactly, but he gets the feeling she's almost embarrassed. "It's about…ghosts. They're, uh, they're usually people with unfinished business, right?"

Dean nods slowly, although he knows that's not always true.

"At first, I thought it was just because I was grieving; I thought I was imagining things."

"I don't understand," Dean interrupts, worried about where this conversation is going. "I thought you said this was about Cassie."

"I thought of everything it could possibly be, but I think I've figured it out. I think it's you," she continues, almost as if she didn't hear him interject. "You're the one she needs to talk to, to fix things with. I think if you talk to her, she can…"

"Mrs. Robinson, I…," he falters, shaking his head in confusion and apprehension.

She gives him a look that makes him uneasy. It's a pleading look, like she knows she's about to ask him to do something he'd rather not.

There's a long pause, and before she says it, everything suddenly makes sense. Dean's entire body goes still, except for his heart which pounds in his ears, and all he can think is _Oh, God._

"Dean, Cassie died three years ago."

---

Some years later, Dean spends Halloween sleeping on a small bed in a chilly motel room.

Sometime around midnight, there's a knock on the door, but he only rolls over in bed and buries himself deeper in the warmth of the blankets.

A few minutes later there's another knock, this time louder and more urgent. Dean groans and throws the covers off, shivering in the cold air. He thinks it's probably just a bunch of kids having a little fun on Halloween, but that doesn't mean its funny or _cute _or anything.

The knocking continues, steadily becoming a pounding, and Dean curses whoever _is_ on the other side, trick-or-treaters or not.

The doorknob is ice-cold beneath his fingers and he fumbles with the lock in the dark. The pounding shakes the door, rattling it on its rusty hinges.

Dean finally unlatches the chain and groggily shouts, "What?!" as he throws the door open.

The only thing that greets him is the frigid October air.

_--- _

He's sitting in a diner one evening reading the paper when his cell phone rings. He doesn't recognize the number but he picks up anyway.

The man's voice on the other end is deep and gravelly but gentle as he says "Hey son."

Normally he'd said _No, sir, I'm sorry. You've got the wrong number. _But something about this man's voice is achingly familiar, and Dean can't say anything in protest.

The man doesn't wait for a response, however. "I've got your brother with meYour mother wants you both home for supper before you two go out tonight so…"

"Dad?" Dean interrupts, his voice faltering at the familiar tone.

"Yeah, kiddo, it's…wait." The man pauses, suddenly sounding unsure. "Is this Matthew?"

Dean swallows against the lump in his throat and stammers, "No…no." Somehow the man no longer sounds like anyone he ever knew.

"Oh, God, I'm sorry. My boy just got a new phone and I must have dialed the wrong number. I'm sorry to have bothered you."

"Yeah, no problem."

"Alright, then," the man answers back, "goodbye."

Before Dean can even stop himself he says, "No, wait…"

There's a pause on the other end of the line before the man answers. "Yes?"

Dean doesn't know what he planned on saying and his entire mind goes blank. "I, uh…never mind. Have a good night." He shuts his phone before anything else can be said and puts it back in his pocket.

The waitress appears suddenly at his side and pulls the bill out of her apron, putting it in front of him. "Wrong number?" she asks offhandedly, popping her gum while she piles the silverware onto his dirty plate.

"Yeah. He, uh, he thought I was someone else." Dean gives her a weak smile but she's too busy cleaning so he tosses some bills on the table and scoots out of the booth.

Outside in the fading afternoon light, he pulls out his phone again and scrolls through the call record. He stares at the unfamiliar number for a moment, taking a deep breath before shoving the phone once more into his pocket.

"I thought you were someone else, too."

---

Sam sits across from him at the small table in the motel room, silent as the grave. The flickering television behind them is playing some classic horror movie and casting eerie shadows on the walls. Dean is sitting forward, hunched in his chair, elbows resting on the table

"Dean," Sam whispers, though it still seems to echo softly throughout the whole room. "Dean, what's wrong?"

If Dean didn't know any better, he'd think Sam's voice was just the wind whistling through cracks in the door and windows.

Dad's journal is sitting in the middle of the table, open to a newspaper clipping that's been tucked in one of the back pages for years.

Dean looks at Sam, holding his brother's gaze for a few moments before glancing down at the article. Sam furrows his brow in confusion but follows Dean's lead and reads the headline.

"You see?" Dean asks after a few moments, his voice a whisper that doesn't echo at all.

Sam looks up from the paper in realization, his eyes almost begging for forgiveness. "Dean…," he says gently, reaching across the table. "Dean, I…"

Dean sits back in his chair, sliding his hands across the table and letting them fall into his lap, out of his brother's reach. "No, Sam," he says, smiling a little. "I'm not mad, not anymore. I'm just saying…you can't keep doing this. _I _can't keep doing this. Please…"

Sam breathes deeply. "Alright, Dean. Alright."

There are no chair legs scratching across the floor, no shutting doors, no heavy footfalls on the motel breezeway. There's just white noise from the television and the wind howling through the cracks. When Dean looks up moments later, Sam is gone.

He reaches for the journal, pulling it closer. He carefully picks up the newspaper article pressed between the pages. It's soft, the edges torn and frayed from age and attention. The ink is faded and smudged from where Dean has run his fingers across every word, and the story printed on the page is almost illegible as a result. It doesn't matter, though, Dean could recite the whole thing; he's read it so many times.

And besides, he thinks, you don't really need a newspaper article to remember the day your brother died.

---

Almost six years after the first time it happened, Dean wakes up from a restless sleep in Michigan to a pounding on the door.

He doesn't think anything of it at first, until he gets to the door and suddenly remembers when it happened years ago.

He places his palms on either side of the peephole cautiously and presses himself up against the door. When he looks through the hole, he sees a tall young man standing on the breezeway with his back to him. He's dressed in jeans and a heavy jacket, his hands stuffed into his pockets and his hair tousled from the autumn wind.

Dean jerks his hands away from the door like it suddenly became hot and stumbles backwards. No sooner has he taken his hands off the door when the pounding starts up again, and all Dean can do is stand frozen in the middle of the room. His mouth is the only part of him that seems to work, but he barely whispers "Go away."

Like the first time, the pounding gets louder and more urgent the more Dean ignores it, but this time the doorknob jiggles in its socket.

"Stop…," Dean chants slowly, but every command is answered with more hammering. "Stop…stop."

He steps back up to the door with two quick strides, bracing one hand against it while he grabs the rattling doorknob with the other.

"Go away!" he growls, his voice coming out dangerously forceful. "Go away!"

The pounding immediately stops.

---

Dean hears a rumor while passing through a small town that every Halloween a young girl is found in the arms of stone angel in the local cemetery.

Dean looks into it and finds out that it's only actually happened a few times in the last century, but of course the fact that it even happened _once_ is weird enough to merit some looking into.

A young waitress tells him that a group of girls usually dare another girl to spend the night in the cemetery as part of an initiation thing. She doesn't really know much more, other than that tonight a girl from her school is going to go through with it and that this will be the first time someone has tried it in years.

So Dean spends the night staked out in the Impala in the only cemetery in town, carefully watching the only stone angel.

By three a.m., the girl still hasn't shown up so Dean thinks she probably chickened out, but he plans to stay the night anyway. Yet despite the cups of coffee from earlier, he falls asleep, and when he wakes up the sun is just barely peaking over the horizon.

There's frost on the windshield and his breath comes out in icy puffs. He works out the cricks in his neck from sleeping against the headrest; he's getting a little too old to be spending the night sleeping in the front seat of his car. Dean puts the keys in the ignition and turns the heat up high. As the hot air melts the frost on his windows, he gives one last look at the grave, and curses when he sees that the stone figure is cradling a young woman.

He stumbles out of the car, the grass crunching beneath his boots, and runs past the crumbling tombstones towards the angel. He stops dead in his track when he sees the woman's face.

It's his mother, years younger than what he could ever remember, but undoubtedly her. She's dressed in a white gown, her golden hair spilling over her shoulders and her creamy skin illuminated by the morning sun.

Dean waits for her to vanish, waits for her form to slowly fade and disappear like a mirage, but nothing happens.

So Dean makes himself disappear instead.

---

Sam comes around the most, and some years Dean doesn't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

One year, Dean literally passes out in the middle of an abandoned house after a Halloween hunt gone particularly wrong. When he wakes up, he's lying on top of a motel bed with no idea how or when he got there.

He takes a shower, washing the blood from his hands and face. He's sore all over and he can feel a pounding headache forming behind his eyes. Dean changes into clean clothes before leaving the room to talk to the motel manager.

"Rough night?" the man behind the desk inquires, eyeing Dean warily when he enters the small lobby.

"When did I check myself in?" Dean asks, ignoring the question. He's not trying to be rude; he just knows that way is a lot easier than making up a believable lie or attempting to tell the truth.

"You came in last night, but someone was with you. Don't you remember?"

"No, I don't, I…someone was with me?"

The man nods, looking a little concerned, and this time more of the concern is for Dean and less for himself.

"Yeah," he continues, "a young man. He didn't say anything, just stood behind you while you got a room and then followed you out. I figured he was with you."

When Dean doesn't respond, the man adds, "Are you alright, sir?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. I'll be fine." Dean smiles genuinely and thanks the man.

When he unlocks the door to his room moments later, he sees that the TV has been turned on to Oprah in his short absence, and suddenly he feels better than he has in years.

---

Somewhere between North Carolina and California, Dean goes to sleep a young man and wakes up decades older.

His life is chronicled in journals and he measures time in mileage instead of in years. He doesn't hunt like he used to, he can't. He's more of a living legend now, someone the younger hunters go to because he's seen everything.

Late one October he's on his way to help out an old friend in Arkansas when he decides to stop for the night. He picks a motel on the edge of town, away from the trick-or-treaters and teenagers who are out for Halloween.

That night, there's a soft knock on his room door. Out of all the years it happened before, Dean only answered the door once and that was the first time. It became a regular occurrence over the years, but he willed himself to ignore it on every occasion.

But this time something's different. Instead of feeling uneasy, he feels relieved in the way someone would feel if a person they'd been eagerly waiting for finally arrived.

He slowly turns the knob, taking a deep breath as he pulls the door open.

This time, Sam is waiting on the other side for him, smiling, and this time they leave together.


End file.
